Robin, could you expand on your comment a bit. One problem I've seen with the threading-for-charity fund-raiser is that there is no target.

I've read that "hundreds of hours of time" were contributed for the software, and RR mentioned that he estimates $2000 has been raised so far.

It would be helpful, I think, to give folks an idea of what a "fair share" for participants might be. For example, if there were 500 hours contributed, then workers are raising about $4.00 per hour of their time, pretty piss poor in my opinion.

I my experience, fund raising with specific goals is always the most productive approach.

Bob Ross wrote:Robin, could you expand on your comment a bit. One problem I've seen with the threading-for-charity fund-raiser is that there is no target.

Bob, it would probably be better for me to defer to RR on this. I'll just say that a small number of forumites have given generously to charitable organizations, either on the list or separate from it, but that a surprising and disappointing percentage haven't responded at all. In the past, when we've done fund-raisers for Windows on the World and Katrina relief, the outpouring has been amazing. In this instance, even though we were asking folks to "pay forward" in thanks for a programmer's time-and-effort donation that benefited us all, the response was disappointing. This is not meant in any way to diminish or seem ungrateful for the response of those who did participate. But there were just so few. Maybe the need just didn't seem as pressing as those true disasters did, I dunno.